Blair has tried the same thing here, with less successful results (although worryingly, the approach hasn't been a total failure.)

But generally if you look at the output of Hollywood, and the beliefs of the evangelicals and fundies, at how US corporations operate, at how Iraq has been run, how Katrina was mismanaged, the one thing all of these have in common is a flight from an adult engagement with reality. Instead there's a preference for busy extrovert comic book non-solutions, driven by a huge element of 'heroic' fantasy, and a simple black and white narrative of good vs evil.

If the narrative actively contradicts reality, so much the better. (qv. The Path to 9/11 as a recent example. And Foley's ironic job as protector of adolescents as another.)

At every level, policy in the US is drawn with a crayon, not a fountain pen. This isn't going to change until some grown-ups start running things again over there.

And even then, there's still the huge, huge problem that there's a significant demographic that thinks with crayon strokes, and is easy prey for any con artist who comes along and tells them what they want to hear.

I'm beginning to believe rather strongly that the skill set required for successfully getting elected in a debased media environment is rarely found in the same person as either the skills need for successful decision making or successful delegation.

You're beginning to think so? It's been bleeding obvious for quite while now. People like Chirac, Blair, Bush, hell, even Reagan's main talent is to campaign  (and to slime and bring down rivals) and get elected.

Competence, if any, will come from the bureaucracy. Thus i hate those that criticze bureaucracies. If they are dysfunctional it is because of poor leadership and focus and territorial warfare rather than issues, and that comes from the top.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes